Guild Wars 2

I would suggest that the community-people pick interesting questions from the forum and forward it to the appropriate team-members. It would be much more economic since the devs are busy working on the game.

I like this idea, but where is the twist? Help Rytlock and Eir to defend your land and help Roxx and Braham to invade into theirs…

Although I’m in a guild with my best RL-friends, most of the time I can only play late at night when everyone is sleeping. I appreciate this 1-man content too I’m happy to talk to my friends about the instance even when I have not enough time to play with them.

I liked how the new hero-npcs (do you see what I did there?) acted during battle… quite active and some skill-usage here and there. Could be more, but definitely an improvement

Although I have shown a lot of (hopefully constructive) criticism I love a lot about Flame and Frost.

It’s not that bad to use the achievements to guide players instead of using a story-tab. Personally I haven’t looked a lot into the Personal Story tab because it’s not that interesting to me. I have the feeling that something is missing. Wouldn’t it be a nice place to put in some decent related concept art? With how much praise Anet got for their artwork… it could be used much more in the game. Using it, for example, only in few dungeons instead of every dungeon was a disappointment for me… it felt unfinished.

Is there still a concept art team or was it closed when Kekai left?

I’m happy about the decision to bring more important characters to the game. You should make use of them in more varied gameplay-situations though… defeating waves the 1001st time won’t keep them hooked like that one Norn in Orr who defeated hundreds of angry Risen who were made angry by the players in an interesting event. Don’t only use the story to make characters interesting, use gameplay too

I think you still can do everything that is to it… they haven’t deleted anything from Flame and Frost yet, have they?

It’s not as epic as I expected… by far… Anet should really work on their marketing to make sure not to disappoint people imho.

they said that it changes the world permanently, but the content (events, story-missions) won’t stay. I guess Cragstead will become available in the open world outside of the instance… I don’t know.

it’s the introduction to the living story… not an expansion. They said that they aren’t working actively on an expansion yet, they want to make sure that the existing world is as well made as possible. I’m for this, but I miss the implementation of new events. Can’t see how a zone with 100 events becomes one with 300… something they intended to do in the past.

+1 for this. They also should make it possible to show it to other people. Like showing your friend a notebook of old times.

actually I think that he looks exactly like the artwork and I love his look. I love the untypical face, yay for a new face-type (is it accessible in the character creator?) and yay for a new hairstyle (same question).

More variety is good, I would have hated it if they had used an existing face/hairstyle again. Roxx on the other hand… it looks like an existing option but with extreme slider-usage. Correct me if I’m wrong.

The Shadow Behemoth fight lasts 3 minutes, I agree that the battles should last longer too – and be more complex.

Well it comes pretty close to afk-ing a boss if you ask me, so I don’t see how this could be considered fun. The one thing you need to do: run back to the boss after you’ve been feared. In the Tequatl-clip above for example you can see that 30+ people do exactly this for the entire fight.

I’m pretty sure I saw more players in Thaumanova during beta than now. This tells me that people prefered the harder encounter.

Raire.7983:

Uhhh… I’d hate for ANet to act on any of this. These events should remain accessible.

Grenth has become an event that just gets ignored, until some leet little group goes and does it by themselves. The Fire Elemental used to be the same way and Jormag is now really pushing it, at least in terms of time taken.

There certainly are issues – that the Jungle Wurm can be half killed by a zergs AOE, before it can even be targeted directly, is a big one. Yet it seems clear that many who attack these events, will only be happy when they’ve driven the more casual players from them. And some of the arguments are ridiculous – you just can’t get gold from clicking auto and standing in a “safe spot”. There are no spots that don’t get attacked and the targets MOVE! Seriously, just see how long you remain locked on the Behemoth, if you try to AFK it.

I can’t believe what I’m reading… please watch this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Ge4Uy6wKVI
Almost all my encounters with Tequatl looked like this, watch the 30+ people standing directly in front of him spamming 1 and receive little to no damage – the whole fight.

I’m a casual player, but this doesn’t mean that I want an easy-mode game. I would actually feel great if I could succeed in a challenge, instead I use timers in the net to find the next encounter, then (most of the time) wait 15min for the “battle” to begin, spam 1 continuously for 5min and have the chance of a rare loot, even though I really want something exotic. And you call this fun? I didn’t even mention the lags.

There is tons of easy-mode gameplay already there, everywhere on the map actually. Why are those rare spawning bosses also like this? I don’t get it.

Grenth actually is tons of fun now. Nothing wrong with a bit of coordination. My guild tried it once, a group of casuals. We didn’t know a lot about the battle, just that those phantoms needed to be killed while in shadowform. Neither of us was full exotic by far. We did it and it was the most fun experience that week. Can’t say the same about the 5-10min Tequatl-encounter where everyone kittened about the bad loot instead of being happy to beat the beast.

Edit: the Shatterer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=669J68GQzW8
Easymode really, if you want to be absolutely safe, go to the mob of players on his left side.

Edit2: don’t know if this was fixed yet, a safe spot under Tequatl:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bjptjOG8zTI

Wift.9862:

If this update doesn’t add a meta-event like the Karka one at the end of the Lost Shores event, then this Flame and Frost addition will surely end up disappointing. Anet should really focus more on the MMO aspects of this game, rather than more single player/cooperative instances in this game.

nothing points against a big metaevent, I personally just don’t think that it would be a one-time thing like the Karka-event again, this would lock out tons of people who aren’t playing 24/7

a repeated Metaevent would also prevent masses of people at the same time which would only result in a lagfest (like the karka-event in Lions Arch)… at least when it happens frequently enough.

edit: hm the more I think of it, the more I think that a wintersday-like instance is more likely, since you can’t prevent first-day lagfests on a new metaevent other than limiting the player-limit on a map.

I don’t think they make those events harder, because they had the fire elemental just fine (killing a lot of players, the battle was epic and could be won only rarely) and nerved it to death. Now it’s just another non-challenging loot pinata.

I thought the players who are looking for a challenge out in the world (outside of dungeons) will find that in some places, but not anymore. If you play a ranged class, you will find no challenge… if you do though, please let me know.

(the 100% win-ratio against metaevent-bosses is a biiiig disappointment for me)

Sithaco.4673:

Oh they did?! That’s great! Thanks haha. I hope that means the scavenger hunt isn’t a one time event either (that’s what one of my friends told me).

I’m not sure. I just remember improvements in the following update in this department and something like: “we learned a lot”…

Do you mean the scavenger hunt for the legendaries? I don’t think we know anything about this yet. I guess it would make no sense to do this temporary, it just would get tons of people kitten , because grandma was on visit at that time and they weren’t able to play because of it.

Sithaco.4673:

I wouldn’t be too suprised if they did a thing to this boss similar to the giant karka, having a high precursor drop chance or something.

haven’t they said that they learned from their mistakes and never do one-time events again? There was a lot of criticism for doing such an event this way and in the next content patch (was it wintersday?) the events were doable for a much longer time.

It’s great, we can see the improvements from each content patch to the next.

I don’t think that anyone can have a problem with the world-boss-encounters, the last time I fought against Tequatl I stood directly in front of him and spammed 1 (and sometimes another key for a phantasm for more damage) without any danger. He feared me a few times, but this was just an annoyance.

Anet should have the numbers: Event XY is successful 90%. And now they should act accordingly and balance the creature for a 50% win/lose ratio.

honestly, I’m pretty sure the dragons get defeated at a rate of 99%. They are just a loot pinata.

Subby.2583:

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

I wonder… do developers participate in open world boss encounters like the Shatterer/Tequatl? Do they find it fun, spamming autoattack? If so, I would be really sad.

Wouldn’t it be cool if F&F – the finale – brings a new worldboss which is pretty difficult to defeat – Fireelemental-Beta-style? Permanent of course.

But even so, if the finale does bring a new boss that is difficult to defeat, with the current rewards it wouldn’t even be worth it.

The rewards at the moment, reflect the difficulty. That’s the problem.

just give more difficult bosses a better loot-table… where’s the problem?

I wonder if the world still gets new events as the concept was at release. We were told to revisit an area a year later and find 200 more new events and older events on longer timers.

For me now it looks like this concept didn’t work out so we get no new events, instead the world gets changed by the living story.

I wonder… do developers participate in open world boss encounters like the Shatterer/Tequatl? Do they find it fun, spamming autoattack? If so, I would be really sad.

Wouldn’t it be cool if F&F – the finale – brings a new worldboss which is pretty difficult to defeat – Fireelemental-Beta-style? Permanent of course.

well traditional quests have rewards…

…but I see where you are coming from. I haven’t looked at it this way yet.
Traditional quests aren’t repeatable – just like the living story achievements are temporary

Actually quite nice, now they could add in more interesting activities other than finding hidden stuff. Like the Halloween-Scavengerhunt-activities for example. Maybe then we would feel like there is actually a lot to do.

Subby.2583:

I always thought world bosses like the dragons would be fun too. Everyone helping everyone. But all it has become is a press 1 spam fest. I could shut my eyes and have a rest while I take down a dragon, just as long as I continue to press 1. Not my idea of fun.

I agree. This could have been something what raids are for other games. A challenge, something that only succeeds rarely. Not a spam1-activity with lots of lag. When I first saw the Shatterer in a video it was like: no other game has such encounters.

…I was right, I can’t think of a game with such big bosses which were such a letdown. Too easy. I laughed when I saw a guide for the bosses yesterday… what for??

the odd thing is: I really loved the holiday content. There was SUCH a big variety of things to do. Even now, I love the SAB much more than the actual main-game. Those story missions are nothing we haven’s seen 1000 times already… defeating waves after waves without any fear of getting killed.

Halloween: Scavenger hunt – yay!! GW2-Dota – yay!!!
Wintersday: Snowball-challenge – yay!! tower defense – yay!!
April: SAB – doubleyay!! (the second yay is for being able to play it solo)

living story since F&F introduction: waves,… waves…, waves… …meh.

if they add a dungeon, something would stay for good. I think it could be a fractal, since those fractals are in different timelines anyway. We experienced the Charr-Invasion in there, why not the F&F-Battle?

Personally I don’t like dungeons that much, I’m playing too late at night and my friends are already sleeping. I’d rather enjoy something which can be done on my own. SAB was the perfect example for this. Also the new story missions. Is this perhaps a new direction Anet is taking? Creating content for Solo-players like me?!

btw: I’ve never seen any one of the guild-missions yet… people don’t play when I do

I agree with Jackard, the game should be expanded instead of adding temporary content. Colin told us that when we come back a year later, an area with once 100 events would offer 300. Imagine 3 times as much dynamic events in Ebonhawke than before… this would be so much fun. They could add small things which tell a story – questlike – and it would work for this game, I’m sure.

This strict “we add no quests to GW2” is a decision I’m not happy with. You could breath more life into the existing areas and tell wonderful stories which won’t disappear like a living story chapter.

I’ll try to be more constructive…

F&F used a lot of defeat-the-wave combat situations. There are so many events in the world already which are designed with much more thought and variety. Take the cow-events in Plains of Ashford for example. Now we got only 2 story-missions and one might think it’s not that difficult to create 2 interesting missions gameplay-wise. Hmm. The game has so much potential, think of the dota-map for wintersday…

There are many examples in GW2 how fun an event could be, why the continous wave-events?

Perhaps it would be best if all of the teams come together and work together on the missions. It seems to me that the story-team has no idea how to create fun gameplay. I loved the story-parts (even if it wasn’t much and I’m disappointed because of the lack of content) and the characters feel really good. But I want more out of a mission. A coherent experience would be nice.

just to make it clear what I’m trying to say: I don’t get why people hype this content when they got much higher quality content before in this game. Furthermore, this content will be gone soon, other than fractals, which will get more and more content.

lordkrall.7241:

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

you must be joking, it were 2(!) story-missions with simple “defeat waves” gameplay

well, I should wait and see how big this finale will be

And several new kinds of mobs, new events, much more information, and story.

Story for 5minutes if you leave away the fighting, events like… spawning even more waves and some Flame Legion guys and Dredge. I really don’t see the amount of stuff which takes that long to implement. The fractal-update was A LOT more new content than we had since the beginning of F&F. The Mad King update had more story since we had in F&F since the beginning.

meh

lordkrall.7241:

And the March update was far from teaser content.

you must be joking, it were 2(!) story-missions with simple “defeat waves” gameplay

well, I should wait and see how big this finale will be

so the upcoming F&F-content ist already the last of this series? We got a bit of teaser content so far and now the finale….?! I don’t know what to think anymore.

don’t get me wrong, I like a lot of aspects of the new story instances. I love that they are soloable, love the characterdesign, the cutscenes, the active heroes,… but I dislike the mission design.

It’s just killing small groups of mobs over and over again, without something that makes for a new experience. Couldn’t there be something very unique in each of those story missions that make them memorable and stand out from the standard wave-dynamic events? Something that you can only do in instances. Like a chase where invincible npcs are hunting you and you have to escape.

It’s there in GW2 already, just not that obvious. There is this one dynamic event in Orr where you have to hurt risen (but not too much) to make them angry but then have to leave them to the female Norn NPC and don’t hurt them any more.

Something like that… bring it a bit of challenge, but not a challenge for your gear but for your brain.

I didn’t think it would be that big a deal to see two people talking in a close-up, but man was I wrong. It actually makes a difference now that I’ve seen it. Time for some new animations that actually fit the new freedom – npcs movements don’t have to fit on half a screen anymore!

ah I see, so the other two dragons have those pre-events… nice to know

I don’t get it, are there certain pre-events that need to be done in order to spawn one of the big dragons or are they coming whether or not you did something?

I’m asking because while I was waiting for Tequatl (Dragontimer HP estimated the arrival) quite a few “Meta-Events” popped up. Did some of them and nothing changed. Started one of them and during the event Tequatl came. This is confusing. Wasn’t it supposed to be like: a few groups on different ends of the map fight for the same goal, to spawn the boss?

Aspeon.3520:

The dragons are easy because they’re heavily zerged, and they’re heavily zerged because they’re easy.

I think they are heavily zerged because there is the dragon-timer. I’m not sure if this is a good thing (too much people = no more scaling = too easy), but on the otherhand… I probably would have never seen a dragon.

I wonder: do the big Metaevents have failing-conditions, do any other follow-up-events spawn it those events fail. Currently I’ve won each of the big Dragon-Battles I participated… is this 100% win-ratio working as intended?

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

• enemies can gain new abilities

I haven’t noticed that a lot, it’s more like: the champion stands around and hits nearest players while most ranged professions stand there and spam skill 1. Example: Wayfarer Foothills – the Icebrood-champion in the north. He isn’t challenging for any ranged player at all.

Now that I think of it I can’t remember when I had a challenging open world boss-fight. Example Tequatl: I just stand in front of him, spam my IBerserker (people wonder why my phantasms float next to Tequatls head) and have no problems at all. (lv.80 Mesmer). The poison on me does little to no damage and the fears on me are nothing worth noting.

Sericenthe.5310:

I don’t get it either. Right now the only drops that excite me are badges, and dungeon tokens which are pretty much automatic. I never get an exciting equipment drop.

thanks, at least one out there gets me.

for me while leveling it was normal to craft the better items instead of finding some of those through playing. It was such a great moment when I got a yellow helmet from my first AC-story run but I’ve never had such an experience (again) /outside of a dungeon. From 1-80 I always crafted good gear (rare gear) and at 80 I started playing the TP and got my first exotic set in 3 days.

The moments I felt truly rewarded:
-) AC story-mode – rare helmet (the only dungeon I did on my way to 80)
-) Southsun Cove rewards – exotics (sadly I couldn’t use those, but they sold well)
-) Backpiece from Halloween
-) about 8-10 karma-rewards from heart-npcs.
-) Map completion in Orr, even though I couldn’t use the exotic.

that’s it. In over 130 hours playtime. No exitement over a drop in the open world.

I’ve seen a lot of rare drops, yes. But these came at a time when I already had rare pieces from crafting long before.

here is one thing I don’t get:

-) it’s very easy to buy good stuff in the trading post (play tradingpost) – least fun activity
-) it’s easy enough to craft good stuff
-) it’s very difficult to find good stuff in the world – most fun activity

as I said in the now locked thread: I think there is a problem in the lootsystem: Anet implemented cool new systems (backscaling, getting to max. level fast) but they took a loot-system from other games nearly unchanged.

the thing is: after a short time each single lootdrop whereever you play is worthless to you. You get little money out of the items and there are ways to earn tons of money in the TP by flipping orders.

Anet has now made it possible to loot lv.80 stuff in low level areas, but does this really change anything? It’s still mostly white/blue, sometimes green stuff and barely worth anything at vendors.

Here a suggestion to make low level loot more significant: wear a full Queensdale-itemset in order to unlock a Queensdale-Guildmission. So people who want to unlock guild missions will have to find (untradeable) zone-specific itemsets first. Stuff they get from lootdrops by playing in that zone.

you could go farther with this:
-) wear a green item-set from a zone to be able to unlock medium guild-missions from that zone.
-) wear a yellow item-set from a zone to be able to unlock hard guild-missions from that zone
…

I mean: make people exited for finding blue, green and yellow stuff again – it’s an mmo and people will only spend a small % of their playtime in leveling up. Most of the time they are max. level and find throw-away stuff which isn’t exiting at all.

I don’t think the missing quality in loot-drops is the big problem here, I think there is a general problem in the loot-system because of backscaling.

-) we get the statistical best loot in 1-3 weeks. From now on each single loot-drop is uninteresting for our own progress.

I like the fact that we reach the plateu fast, but it makes no sense to me that we still get tons of not-usable loot when we already have the best loot. In other games you actually spend a long time leveling up and you wear those low-level gear quite a long time – but here it’s totally different. Sometimes I even left out 5-10 levels wearing approptiate gear while leveling up and now I get gear for fully equipping 40 other characters.

What I’m trying to say: Anet implemented quite a lot new cool systems (backscaling, fast max. level) but took the loot-system from other mmos and left it unchanged.

It would feel nice if (for example) low level sets would be useful for something. E.g. equip a full Queensdale-Karma-Set in order to unlock a Queensdale-Guild Mission. That way the Guild-Mission could be easily balanced around the gear (because everyone wears the same set) and low-level stuff would actually feel usefull for high-level players.

yeah but those 80 drops you get are still white, blue or sometimes green. Vendor trash. Furthermore you only have the chance to get lv.80 gear, most of the time it’s zone-related though

what it does:
-) you have a lot more progression without losing the no-grind-for-max-loot idea.
-) at lv.80 you are happy about a yellow lv.29 helmet drop
-) no more “again only vendor trash”… in 99% of looting

the idea:
Imagine you are in a lv.30 zone. You are lv.80. Your gear doesn’t scale back to lv.30 though you keep the look of your gear. Instead you (automatically) equip the best gear you had when you were lv.30. The system remembers that stuff.

So if you found a green lv.29 helmet when you were a lowie-character and the next thing you found would have been a blue lv.31 helmet, you would be equipped with the lv.29 helmet. (you still have the looks of your lv.80 helmet of course)

or a better solution: you unlock stats (stat patterns) and can choose those when scaling back.

example:
you found those helmets
lv.1 blue – 5tough
lv.2 blue – 4pow
lv.4 blue – 7crit
lv.6 blue – 8tough

now you are lv.80 and go to a lv.5 zone
-) the system automatically equips you with the lv.4 blue – 7crit
-) you can change the stats between 5tough, 4pow and 7crit. The lv.6 item is only available in higher than lv.5 zones.
-) you keep the looks of your lv.80 helmet.

The big advantage:
you have a lot more progression. Everytime you go back to low level zones you can actually use those low level drops and you may be happy about a yellow lv.29 helmet drop instead of having another vendor-trash item for selling.

What do you think?

I find the loot system flawed in certain aspects and I’ll explain why I think so:

-) it’s not difficult in this game to get rare or exotic gear. When I got 80 I got to full rare in a couple of days (crafting) and full exotic in 1-2 weeks (trading post, flipping buy-orders).

-) I have to stress this: I like this a lot. No gear grind. You’re fast at the plateau. Good.

-) now what happens: the longer you play the game, the more needless loot gets. Play the game for 3 months means: 16% of your playtime is loot-relevant, the rest is playing with lv.80 exotics.

-) play the game for 5 months means: only 10% of your playtime was spent upgrading your gear.

-) I see this as a dilemma-situation. On the one hand I like the fact that you get to the plateau as fast as it is now, on the other hand… why do we still get loot-drops when all of our gear is exotic.

-) the reality now: we don’t get exotics through drops by playing in the world. We get rares… very rarely. Sometimes greens but most of the time blue and white trash.

so what do we get out of those vendor-trash situation? a few coins. Not that interesting imho. Is this how mmos worked until now? Yes! Does that mean that it’s good? Meh.

the advantage quests have is that they can tell great stories, give you a lot of lore and take you through multiple zones.

Anet realized this by implementing the very successful Halloween-scavenger-hunt. I really think they did a good job with that.

still I don’t agree that we need quests – look at Ebonhawke. This city feels so much more alive than any other city in my opinion, because there are certain things there:
-) events!!
-) non-combat activities (in the form of hearts, but it could be done differently)
-) vistas
-) lore-related stuff via the cemetary – a lot of eastereggs
-) hidden books telling the story of Ebonhawke – finding all unlocks a hidden achievement

so in short, plenty of things to do there
see? tons of potential for the main cities – you don’t need quests for that. (Still sometimes I miss some Wall of Text – not much for lorefans but a few one-liners from NPCs)

Hi guys

based on what we know of Guild Missions, could you think of any examples?

for me it sounds like this:
example A: summon a boss-creature
example B: race through a Jumping Puzzle

-) a guild can research guild missions
-) if they start one of the researched missions in the open world, following happens:
-) there is a main objective which only guild-members can accomplish (e.g. guildmembers get a weapon which can harm the boss that appears)
-) there are secondary objectives where everyone can help participate (non-guildmembers can help killing the minions, they can’t hurt the boss though since they got no special weapon from a guild-herald to harm the beast)

-) in certain missions (like the guildrush) a goal is achieved if a minimum of players does a certain activity
-) e.g. guildrush: Jumpingpuzzle XY: the guild creates a start and finish-line via starting the mission
-) at least 10 players have to run from start to finish in 5 minutes.
-) this means that you need for example 8 guild-members and 2 random people who achieve this goal.

-) so everyone who succeeds in this challenge gets a reward when the guild-goal is met
-) guildmembers get guild-rewards for guild-wide bonuses
-) the random joe gets another reward
-) if you complete it for the first time, you get a personal reward
-) the one from the guild who kicked off the mission receives an extra different type of reward (tradeable in a category: personal guild rewards)

so a lot of rewards

What do you think, does this sound realistic? Do you have any more ideas?

Woodenpotatoes:

a interesting opinion which got me thinking. It’s not as negative as you might think, rather about the potential the game really has

The thing I’m wondering at the moment when I’m looking at the living story implementation:

Is there still a live-team which adds new content to the game (in form of Dynamic Events, which complement the existing world-content) or is this living-story idea the new way content is handled? What I mean:

Version A: Now you have 1500 Events. In a Year from now we will have 2500 Events (1500 already existing ones but with longer spawn-timers + 1000 entirely new events which spawn in between existing old event-spawns)

OR is the new iteration now the living story:

Version B: Now you have 1500 Events. Now the events in the zones “Wayfarer Foothills” and “Diessa Plateau” get slowly replaced by new living story events. A year from now you have still 1500 Events of which 200 new ones replaced 200 old ones.

Can someone clarify? I got to this Version B conclusion because I didn’t notice new events beside very few small ones like the Skritt-burglar in latest patches. I wonder what the live-team is working at the moment. I’m quite confused what to believe.

what’s the fuss about ride the lightning?

isn’t the travel-distance greatly reduced by the 40% speed-debuff?

if you can play with a keyboard lying down, you can play with a G13 ^^

no need of ctrl+something at all with this, every key easy to reach.